Workshop Fun

Myself and 7 other artists were really lucky recently to participate in a masterclass in encaustic painting at the RHA gallery in Dublin run by the wonderful artist Joanna Kidney.

Joanna Kidney demonstrating colour mixing

Joannas workshops are sponsored by R&F paints so there was, what felt like, an almost limitless supply of encaustic paint and pigments - it was like the feeling of being in a sweet shop as a kid with €20 to spend and no adults around to chastise you for how much you ate! (I did not eat any encaustic paint at the workshop, but some of it does actually look good enough to eat… don’t do it though) I completely fell in love with Cadmium Red Light - such a rich and striking colour - I also loved the translucent colours for adding layers of glaze - this paint is so special and there’s so much to explore and experiment with.

Cadmium red light encaustic paint

Joanna introduced me to working with encaustics in a way that I had not previously thought about and the pieces I was working on over the 3 days were completely different to any kind of work I’d normally do. I found this SO liberating as I had no attachment to the pieces and didn’t really care about the end result or messing things up - this freed me up to just keep adding layers and scraping back sections, adding more and just really being able to experiment with techniques and colours - I usually cringe at the term ‘play’ with it, but that was essentially what I got to do.

In the process of making work (my work on the left and the very talented Gillian Murphys on the right, whose pieces turned out to be very beautiful!)

The pieces I ended up with incorporated all of the techniques Joanna introduced us to - glazing, layering, intaglio, using the flow pen (one of my new favourite tools), intarsia / encaustic inlay and simply using the heat to manipulate the paint.

I had such a wonderful time exploring techniques and process, I think process is my favourite part of making art… being able to forget about the finished product and being able to focus on the process and almost just be in the moment of the process is my happy place!

The end results